


i was afraid of the love that you asked for

by Tonight_At_Noon



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Bucky's POV, Established Relationship, F/M, Falling In Love, Fix-It of Sorts, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Post-Canon, Romance, Sad with a Happy Ending, Secret Relationship, because i have to fit her into bucky's timeline post-winter soldier, but as always please do enjoy my, i'm writing this after reading mrs. dalloway and that might have influenced the confusing timeline, lots of jumping back and forth in time, to see how bucky and darcy got together
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-14
Updated: 2019-05-14
Packaged: 2020-03-05 10:17:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18826648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tonight_At_Noon/pseuds/Tonight_At_Noon
Summary: Steve is surprised when Bucky returns from the Decimation desperate to find someone.





	i was afraid of the love that you asked for

**Author's Note:**

> It has been months since I have put this much effort into a story. And let me tell you, I love this story. But I am of course very biased. I was wondering if Endgame would inspire me, seeing as nothing had been inspiring me lately and the end of this era was so exhausting to me that I was sure my writing days were basically over. But then this idea came to me, and I had to give it to you all. 
> 
> Please enjoy, and leave a little love if you're feeling up to it. 
> 
> Thank you all for your continued support. Here's to the next phase. (And let's be real, as soon as the Falcon/Winter Soldier TV show comes out, I'm gonna be writing up a storm.)
> 
> [Title comes from the Young the Giant song "Elsewhere"]

*** * ***

_Love is not a choice_

*** * ***

The battlefield is slowly clearing and she is all he can think about. Since the fighting stopped, since Tony Stark sacrificed himself for them all, she has been the only thing on his mind. He sees her, clear as day, standing at the balcony window of his shitty apartment in Bucharest, wearing one of his sweaters because she didn't think to bring any warm clothes. Because she didn't think Romania got cold in the winter.

'It's Europe,' she said. 'Don't people come here for the clear skies and warm weather? To escape the frigid American temperatures?'

She was thinking about Greece. Southern Italy. The Caribbean islands. But a ticket to Bucharest was cheaper, and she wasn't in a position to pay extra for one of the fancy European getaway destinations. It made him nervous when she stood so close to the glass. To the grainy, translucent square that would shatter to a hundred million pieces with the slightest amount of pressure. A bullet would go right through, facing no resistance. Then it would go right through her.

'You're here,' she said, turning away from the window and coming towards him. All of those bloodied thoughts drained from his head. He sat on the mattress in the middle of the shitty, tiny room, wondering instead how things had managed to get this far with this random girl who was not just a random girl anymore. 'You'll keep me warm,' she said and she got to her knees in front of him, her glasses sliding down her nose, and she kissed him like he was a normal man.

That was the danger of her. She made him feel normal. She made him, for those seconds, minutes, hours that she was with him, forget himself. His struggles to recall the last seventy years of his life vanished when she was in the room. And the more time he spent with her, the more he wanted to let those parts of him slip so far away he could never retrieve them.

'Something’s on your mind,' she said, pulling away. He reached up without thinking, the metal of his left arm clinking lightly against the frame of her glasses. She didn't even blink as he pushed them gently up her nose.

'Something’s always on my mind,' he said.

'Yeah, but this is something bigger,' she said.

'How can you possibly know that?' he asked as she climbed into his laps. Her legs went either side of his hips. Her heels joined at his spine. It was like she was trying to permanently entwine their bodies. Wrap herself up in him, like she couldn't get enough. It felt strange. Nobody had touched him like this in so long. Maybe no-one had ever touched him like this.

'Don't question me,' she said. Then she curled her arms around his neck and pressed her forehead to his and he thought for a second that he might suffocate—she wasn't giving him any room to breathe—but after that second the feeling passed and it was replaced by a sprouting warmth that unfurled in his groin and spread everywhere inside of him. His wrist, his fingertips, his toes, his lips all pulsed. 'So,' she said, 'what's on your mind.'

And he smiled. Actually smiled at her, his mouth going up either side, automatically stretching. It hurt—his mouth was so unused to the strain—but he didn't stop. 'You're relentless,' he said.

'I know. Now tell me,' she said grinding her head into his. She matched his smile.

'I just feel,' he said, gripping her waist, careful not to press too hard (he wasn’t yet used to having to be careful with the people he touched—his natural instinct was to break them, and he was trying so, so hard not to break her), 'like I’m being watched.'

'You are,' she said, and his eyes widened before she finished by saying, 'I’m watching you.' And she kissed him again. One of those all-consuming kisses that threatened to suck the soul out of his chest, and he pushed away his paranoia in favor of pushing his sweater off of her body.

From where he sits, Bucky watches T’Challa huddle with his family. Their gratitude and happiness and love is written all over their faces. He sees the annoying spider kid sitting by Tony Stark’s body, his arms wrapped around a blond woman’s shoulders. Together, they shake and sob, and Bucky feels their grief like grit in his teeth.

Did the purple thing take her as well? Bucky buries his face in his hands. God, he can’t think about that. But it’s all he can think about. Her body fading, turning to dust. Her life put on hold for, what? Five years? Is that what the magician man said?

Wherever she is, even if she didn’t get taken, is she looking for him? The last thing he told her—

“Old man, we did it.”

The bird. Bucky lifts his head. Sam stands in front of him against the backdrop of the murky, thick sky, a smug smile on his face.

There’s too much death in the air for that kind of smile.

“No, we didn’t,” he says, looking again at the kid. He’s small. He looks as small as Steve did before they injected him with the serum.

Sam turns his head, following Bucky’s gaze. “I guess you’re right. But we did some things. I definitely kicked some alien ass today.”

Bucky gets it. This is Sam’s way of dealing with things. Jokes and gallows humour. But he can’t hear it, not right now. Not when she’s so far away from him. Getting to his feet, Bucky wobbles slightly before walking past Sam and heading for where Steve stands a few paces from Tony Stark. His tears have cut through the grime on his cheeks. He wipes them away and clears his throat thickly when Bucky makes himself known.

“Buck, I”—

—“I need to find someone,” Bucky says, cutting Steve off.

Steve steps back and tilts his head in confusion. “What?” he says, frowning. “Who do you need to find?”

“A girl,” Bucky says, his heart pounding so hard and loud it drowns out the kid’s cries. “Darcy.”

He found her the first time cursing out a taxi driver on the pavement outside of a hostel, her hair and clothes and suitcase soaked from the cold rain that had just stopped. The old man was giving it right back to her in Romanian, although it seemed like neither understood what the other was shouting. It was just a jumble of swear words.

And he watched it all unfold. He had never seen such a short woman scream such angry, hate-filled words at an apparent stranger. It was mesmerizing. Until the older, much larger man placed his fat hands on her shoulders and shoved her backwards. She stumbled, her next round of insults knocked out of her as she hit the brick wall of the hostel. Her glasses almost slipped right off her nose.

Bucky was supposed to be keeping a low profile. HYDRA was looking for him. SHIELD was looking for him. He was a man on the run. But he couldn’t stop himself from going up to her. The taxi man jumped in his car before Bucky could cross the street. He ignored the squealing tires and instead focused on the girl, tilting the rim of his baseball cap down to cover his eyes. He asked if she was okay.

'I’m okay,' she said, but when she rubbed the back of her head blood smeared across her palm.

'Okay, maybe I’m not okay,' she said. She pushed her glasses with her bloodied palm. Red streaked up her nose. Taking a shaky breath and letting out with a shaky laugh, she went on, 'I didn't think I was okay, but I wasn't sure, and I wanted to seem completely unfazed by the scary dude who just decided to push me against a fucking wall for fun, but nope. I'm bleeding. And I'm pissed. And I'm sorry for talking so much. There's no way all of that needed to be said.'

She said all of that with blood running down her neck.

And he wished it had dawned on him then, right then, that he was following the white rabbit. That he was falling, falling, falling into a world he would never be able to escape. Maybe he would have turned the other way immediately. Or maybe he would have done nothing different. She had that strong of a pull. But he didn't know anything. All he wanted to do was help, and he didn't think twice when he tipped up his cap and revealed his face to her.

There was no gasp of realisation or recognition. Of either fear or fascination. She just looked up at him with her doe-like eyes, her stare sharp from the pain.

'Let me help,' he said, surprised by how easy it was for the words to get out. It shouldn't have been so easy. He was meant to be in self-preservation mode. 'My apartment is just down the road.'

'Your apartment?' she said. 'Are you going to murder me once we get there?'

Bucky went still. He wanted to say something to assure her he was most definitely not planning on murdering her, but he was struggling to push down unwelcome memories filled with cries for him to stop. For him to spare their life.

'It's fine,' she said, and her unbloodied fingers pressed against the fabric of his jacket, right at the centre of his chest. 'I don't actually think you're going to murder me.'

Flinching out of his past, Bucky said, 'So you'll come with me?'

She looked for a brief moment like she was going to refuse. She started shaking her head no. But the jerky movement made her whole body wobble and the silent no quickly turned into a verbal yes, and Bucky Barnes found himself guiding a stranger through the streets of Bucharest, his eyes scanning every corner and side street for suspicious faces, to his shitty apartment, careful to not let her see his left arm.

'This is where you live?' she said as soon as the door shut behind them. She sounded almost amused. 'It looks worse than the inside of the hostel. Worse than my first year dorm.'

He ignored her comments, pulling the sleeve of his jacket down over his left hand as he rummaged through the shelves by the front door for the first aid supplies. She sat on the lone sofa in the apartment, the one with mismatched cushions, when he told her to, and she only swore for a few seconds as he started cleaning her wound. It was like being back on the battlefields in Europe. What he could remember of them. Foul language and blood. But no pretty girls with big eyes and lips. That was different.

The gash was shallow and easy to fix, and it didn't occur to him until she stood and faced him and said 'Thank you, by the way my name is Darcy' that they hadn't exchanged names.

Then she looked at him expectantly. Without the blood on her face, she was pretty. And there was a glimmer in her eyes. A spark of something that told Bucky she always had a snarky comment waiting for its opportunity to burst forth.

'I don’t do names,' he told her. He turned away from the sofa and threw the bloodied cotton balls in the bin.

'You don’t do names,' she said. 'What does that mean?'

'It means I don’t do names. I don’t give out my name.' Why was he explaining this to her? He shouldn’t be explaining this to her. He should have just left her bleeding at the side of the road.

'Are you a criminal?' she said, and Bucky’s heart thudded hard. 'Are you a criminal on the run?'

Turning on the tap, he stared ahead at the cracked tile. He washed his hands, hoping she couldn’t hear the clinking of his left hand. He scrambled to think of something to say. 'What if I am?' was what he settled on. Switching off the water and mindfully drying his hands, Bucky turned, leaning his back against the sink.

Darcy’s head tilted a centimetre to the side. Her lips parted and her eyebrows moved ever so slightly together, like she was trying to decide if he was joking. 'Well, she said, you haven’t killed me yet. You’ve not even tried. So, either you’re biding your time, or you’re not as bad as all that.'

'As all what?'

'As all the other criminals on the run.'

'Do you know many?' he said, and it was the first thing he said that made Darcy Lewis smile, and he thinks that was when it was all over for him.

'I’ve known a couple. They were quick to go for the throat. But look at me,' she said, dragging her pointer finger across her neck, 'everything’s still intact.'

Steve paces the designated computer room of a random stranger. Everyone near the battle site is making use of whatever place they can that wasn’t touched by gunfire. This is the third day they have camped out in the room. The woman—Bucky keeps forgetting her name—who owns the house keeps saying they can use her desktop for as long as they need, but Bucky is hopeful he won’t need to take her up on the offer. And he never hopes. For anything. But he needs to find her. What is the point of surviving the purple man’s plan to wipe out half of humanity if she isn’t here?

Sitting at the computer desk, Bucky refreshes the state’s reunification website and scrolls the new page searching for her name. Two days ago he didn’t know what a mouse was. Steve had to teach him how to use it. And a computer. And then the bird had to jump in because apparently getting two men who survived the Second World War to try navigating a 21st century technological device never works out.

Thousands of new names are added to the list every minute. Bucky’s gut lurches every time he sees the letter _D_. There’s a constant pounding in his head. A tension headache that refuses to go away, like his skull is cracking under the pressure.

Steve still doesn’t understand. He keeps saying it. And Bucky understands, because Bucky is refusing to talk about it. About her.

“It doesn’t make sense,” Steve says now, his body moving like a blur around the room behind Bucky. Bucky continues scrolling. “Why didn't you say anything about her? What was she doing while you were in Wakanda? What was she even doing in Bucharest in the first place?”

He repeats these questions. Maybe in the hope Bucky will snap and explain. But he doesn't want to. He wants to protect her from this side of him. The Steve side. The warring side. Back when he first was getting to know her—stupidly getting to know her, letting her in, telling her things—he was set on never disclosing his true identity because of how badly he wanted to ensure her safety. And her knowing was a liability.

But she had a way of getting him to talk. Even when it was the last thing he wanted to do.

He knew it was her by the way she knocked on his door. Several hard, loud bangs in quick succession. He hadn’t necessarily been expecting her, but he wasn’t surprised by her sudden appearance.

'I know who you are,' she said as soon as he opened the door, and Bucky’s heart had never dropped to his stomach so quickly.

'What?'

She came inside and closed the door when it was clear Bucky no longer had use of his arms, flesh and otherwise. Turning around slowly, his breaths shallow and painful, he watched as she took off her red scarf. She set her things on the sofa and headed right for the basin. She always washed her hands when she first entered the apartment. He wasn’t sure why. He’d never asked. They knew nothing about each other really. Nothing important.

Darcy silently rinsed and dried her hands before facing him with a single eyebrow arched. Then the eyebrow fell and she slumped a little at the waist. 'Okay, fine, I don’t know who you are,' she said. 'But,' she said, pointing a finger at him, 'I recognise you. You’re someone.'

Still with his back to the door, Bucky considered running. Just taking off and leaving everything here and never returning, not even for the notebook. But that impulse faded as quickly as it overtook him, and he was left with a decision to make. Darcy Lewis stood a few paces in front of him waiting for him to speak. Her glasses were wet with melted snow. Her teeth captured her bottom lip.

His mouth filled with ash. Bucky tried swallowing, but his throat was not working. It was rebelling against him. And he didn’t know how he found himself in this situation. All he wanted to do was help the poor American girl with the bleeding skull. It was never supposed to turn into this. But it did, and he had done nothing so far to stop it.

He wanted to tell her. He needed to. Of course, it was so clear to him now.

'Bucky. Tell me who you are,' she said.

'It’s a long story.'

'I’ve got nowhere to be. Vacation, remember?'

'You might not like it.'

'Try me,' she said, her voice wavering.

And it was that easy. It shouldn't have been that easy. He told her. And he showed her—his arm, his scars, the notebook, the backpack buried underneath the floorboards.

Instead of fleeing or calling the police, she listened. She stayed. She tucked his too-long hair behind his ear and ran the pad of her finger down his jaw, the curves of her fingerprint catching on the stubble.

'Bucky Barnes,' she said, his name coming out like a long exhale. 'I like you Bucky Barnes.'

He didn’t know how, but he knew she meant it. And he didn’t know why, but he liked her too.

“Do you boys need anything?”

Bucky jerks away from the computer. The kind woman is in the doorway. She calls them boys as if they are not at least fifty years older than her.

Steve stops pacing. “No, thank you, ma’am. We’re doing alright.”

Steve is not alright. Steve has just lost Tony Stark and has not had the time to mourn. Steve has lost Natasha Romanoff and has not had the time to mourn. His team is splintered and cracked, and nothing can repair it this time.

And Bucky is not alright. Bucky is never alright. But especially not now when his bones feel like wet cornstarch. Not when he still has no idea if Darcy is alright.

“Okay,” she says, smiling warmly. “Just let me know if I can do anything. Good luck with your search.” She says the last thing staring directly at Bucky. Then she walks away, leaving the half-mechanical man to return to his draining task.

“Just tell me,” Steve says, coming up to the computer, “why she was in Romania.”

Bucky’s numb fingers move the mouse’s wheel. His eyes are so tired. So bleary. He can hardly make out any of the names on the screen. It’s like he’s staring at the monitor through a flurry of snow. “Something happened to her,” he says. He might as well give Steve something. “She was working in London with an astrophysicist when she saw something. It was bad enough that she needed to get out of there.

'Things don’t normally shake me,' she had said to him the night she explained her trip east. Their sweat-soaked bodies were still recovering and her words came out like heavy pants. 'But that did. Jane understood, but I’m sure she’s wondering why it’s taken me so long to come back.'

'Did you say you would?' he asked. He didn’t want her to leave him.

'Yes.' She turned onto her side and pressed her mouth against his chest. Her tongue gently swam through the moisture gathered on his skin. 'But I’m not going. Not now.'

He knew what she meant. She was staying for him. For them, really. His heart swelled. His belly fluttered. She had the strangest effect on him. With her, he was a teenager again. Experiencing everything for the first time. But then, he had never experienced anything like this. Not before HYDRA. Certainly not since.

Holding her to him, he found her mouth and kissed her, sucking the salt from her tongue.

Bucky is so busy remembering—good things this time, not the bad things—that he almost scrolls past her picture. He stops breathing. He stops scrolling. There she is, at the top of the computer screen. Name: Darcy Lewis. Location: Brooklyn, New York, United States of America. Status: Alive.

Alive.

He sounds the word out in his head slowly. A-L-I-V-E.

“I’ve found her,” he chokes out. God, he can’t breathe. Really and truly cannot get his lungs to work. “She’s okay. She’s in New York.” She’s close. Mere hours away from him. And she's alive.

He scans the number below her picture and shakily asks Steve for the nearest phone.

“New York?” Steve says, handing Bucky the computer room’s landline. “Why isn't she in Romania?”

“Because,” he says, his eyes stinging as he tries to punch in the phone number, “I told her to get back to America the day you found me.” He finishes putting the number in and double checks it’s correct before taking as deep a breath as he can manage. He presses the CALL button.

They were together that morning Steve came to him in Bucharest. They were both being lazy. He hadn’t been so relaxed since before the war. But soon Darcy would need to get to work. She had started helping an old woman she met shortly after arriving in Romania. Darcy still barely spoke any of the national language, and the woman spoke absolutely no English, but Darcy was never in a bad mood after she returned to Bucky’s apartment.

He missed her when she was gone. It had gotten that bad. When she was out, he forgot what he used to do with himself before she bled her way into his backwards, fucked up life. Search for the past. Push the past as far away as he could. Rinse, repeat.

'We need food,' she said that morning. Her hair was fanned over his chest. The strands kept drifting into Bucky’s mouth whenever he breathed in. 'You could go to the market downtown.'

'You’ll already be out.'

'I’ll be busy. Too busy to worry about grocery shopping. Besides, the vendors can never understand me. It’s better when you get the food.'

'They don’t understand you,' he said, scraping Darcy’s hair from the inside of his lip, 'because you don’t speak their language.'

'But I speak English!' she exclaimed, throwing her arms up in the air. She nearly whacked his face with her elbow. 'Doesn’t everyone speak English? Why don’t they speak English?'

'They probably do.'

'Then why don’t they speak English to me?'

'Because you are so very American,' he said as her arms came down. He clipped their hands together. Wove their fingers together. Just because he could.

'So, the system is rigged against me. Nothing that I do will make my life in Romania any easier?'

'Fine,' he said, bending his neck down and pecking her temple. She was already smiling. She already knew what he was going to say. 'I’ll get the damn food.'

'Thank you, Bucky.' She squeezed his hand. 'I think I saw plums yesterday. They looked yummy. Get me some of those plums, loverboy.'

'Plums,' he said, this time going for her mouth. 'Check.'

The phone rings. And rings and rings. Bucky’s tongue dries and swells inside of his mouth. The tips of his fingers, of his toes, go numb then start fizzing like he has a bad case of pins and needles.

Steve looms over him, his face contorted in concentration and a small amount of betrayal.

“What's happening?” he asks when Bucky, his hand shaking violently as if he has no control over it, removes the phone from his ear.

“She didn't pick up,” he croaks.

“What? Why?” Steve must be tired of asking these questions. Of not knowing. He runs a hand down his face and holds his jaw like he has to stop himself from screaming.

Bucky has to stop himself from screaming too.

“She never picks up when she doesn't recognise the number.”

If he's honest, he likes that part. Usually. But not now. Not when it is so important. The most important thing in the whole universe.

He swallows past his thick, sandy tongue tasting nothing but bile and dials again, the memory of that day in Bucharest climbing inside his head again.

He had not been on such high alert in months. Darcy had made him soft. Weak.

Why didn't he just leave her at the side of the road?

The image from the newspaper burned every time he closed his eyes. Had she seen it? Did she think it was him?

Searching the deserted backstreets, Bucky came across a battered payphone. Keeping his eyes trained on every unseeable corner, he walked up to it, tipping his head down and hiding his left hand. He pulled random change out of his pocket and shoved them into the coin slot. He didn't stop until there was almost nothing left.

He knew this was going to happen eventually. It had to. He couldn't just happily live out his life in Romania without consequence. The world wasn't going to forget the Winter Soldier.

He had a plan for this sort of thing. The backpack was there for a reason.

But Darcy.

Oh, God, Darcy. She was never supposed to happen.

Bucky pressed his cheek against the receiver. Then he banged it against his forehead. He couldn't change things now. She was in his life—buried inside of him. Nothing could sever their tie.

Digging the phone into his ear, Bucky punched in Darcy’s mobile number. He nervously chewed on his lip, a habit he picked up from her, as he waited.

'No, Darcy, pick up,' he said aloud through gritted teeth. 'Please, don't you see how important this is?'

Holding the phone between his shoulder and ear, Bucky hurriedly redialed the number.

'Hey, whoever this is, if you could just go ahead and fuck right'—

—'Darcy, stop talking.'

'Bucky,' she gasped. 'What’s happened?'

'It's not good,' he said. 'It's really not good. Are you near a TV?'

'Yes.'

Bucky steeled himself. 'Turn it on. Find a news channel. Any news channel. Have you got it?'

'Yeah, but Bucky, what the hell is this?'

He pulled away from the handset and bit hard into his lip. His throat ached. 'Darcy, it's not me. I don't know who it is, but it is not me. But,' he said, 'it's someone who wants people to think it's me, and that means I have to leave.'

'No,' she said, the word turning over in Bucky’s stomach.

'Yes. And it means you have to leave too. You can't go back to the apartment. You have to get out of here.'

'No.'

'Yes, Darcy,' he said firmly. 'I can't let them find you.'

'But I know SHIELD. I know these guys'—

—'Not anymore. Listen to me Darcy. It has never been more important. You have to trust me. Get out of Romania. Get out of Europe. Wherever you go, tell no-one you were ever here. No-one, even if you think you can trust them. When you leave this place, I no longer exist. And don't listen to the news.' He broke off, coughing to dislodge the blockage in his throat. 'I'm me,' he said. 'I'm not him anymore.'

'I know,' she said, and it sounded like she was crying, and the sound broke his soul in half. 'I love you. I'll get out, I swear.'

He closed his eyes. He shouldn't have, but he didn't have the strength to keep them open. 'Good. I’ll contact you when I can. I—I love you.'

He didn't let her respond. Hanging up the phone, he checked his surroundings and headed for his apartment.

“Hello?”

Black spots invade Bucky’s eyeline. His head fills with static. He clenches his jaw so tight his teeth could snap.

“Hello . . . Bucky?” she whispers, her voice so small—so, so small. He hasn’t heard her say his name since he first found himself in Wakanda. How many years ago was that now? So many. Too many.

“Did she pick up this time?” Steve asks, but the words are muffled against Bucky’s ears.

“Darcy,” he breathes. His face feels wet. And hot. His lungs burn, as if he has been running in the Italian summertime wearing his military uniform.

“Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Bucky.”

Steve vanishes from the room. It is only Bucky and Darcy who remain.

“It’s me,” he says, “I’m here. I’m okay. Are you—are you okay?” he asks, sucking his bottom lip between his teeth and biting so hard he tastes blood.

“Yes.” She’s crying again. He is too. “I’m okay. I am so fucking okay. Where are you?”

“I’m close. Still near the battlefield. But I’m coming. Where are you?”

Stumbling over her words, she eventually manages to give Bucky her Brooklyn address. He repeats it out loud with the blind expectation that Steve is still in the room and writing it down.

“When can you get here?” she asks.

With the help from the guy with the magic hands, instantly. But he won’t ask him for help. Even though he wants to. “Soon. I’ll get a jet with Steve and we’ll be there soon.” He is about to hang up—he is too excited; he is sick with excitement—but she says something that halts his movements.

“It’s been so lonely without you,” she says. “It’s been so lonely and so long. Just, get to me, Bucky.”

So long? Does that mean . . .? “I will,” he says, and it is her who hangs up on him.

Steve acquires a jet within twenty minutes of Bucky putting the phone down. The kind old woman gives them both hugs before they leave her house for the last time. “I’m glad you got through to her,” she says. There is a sadness in her eyes. Someone from her life must not have made it back. Bucky nods, squaring his shoulders as he follows Steve.

“I’ll get us there,” he says. Bucky nods again. His vocal cords aren’t working.

Darcy survived the Decimation. She has been waiting for him for seven years. With the time he spent frozen in Wakanda, the time he spent as dust, the time he spent fighting, to him it has been a blip. A passing moment. Agonising, yes, and tortuous, but hardly any time at all.

But for her. For Darcy, it has been so many years. And still, after all of this time, she is waiting for him.

“You didn’t tell me about her, Buck,” Steve says once they’ve reached cruising altitude.

Bucky stares ahead out the window. He loves Steve like a brother. They are family. If it weren’t for Steve believing in him, trusting that he was battling against HYDRA with all of his might, he would either be in jail or dead. But he will not defend his silence. “I didn’t tell anyone,” he says. “I couldn’t risk it.”

“If you couldn’t risk it,” Steve says, and Bucky knows exactly what he will say next, “then why did you get involved in the first place?”

“It wasn’t like I sought her out. I didn’t plan this. It just . . . happened. I tried to stop it, but there was nothing I could do.”

“Nothing? Buck, you could have cut ties. You could have told her it was too dangerous and made her leave. You could have done”—

—“I didn’t want to, okay? I found her and I didn’t want to let her go. I was so sick of running away from everyone and everything, of feeling like an alien, that when I met her, and she made me feel normal again, like I did before the war, I made the decision to be with her. I know it was stupid, but I don’t care,” Bucky says, releasing his clenched fists. He hadn’t realised he had closed his hands. Leaning back against the seat, he wipes his face.

“You really do love her, then?”

Bucky looks at Steve out the corner of his eye. “I do,” he says, and it is the first time he has said this to anyone other than Darcy, and it feels good.

“Then I can’t wait to meet her.”

“You’ll like her,” Bucky says. It’s strange talking about her in the open like this. “Not everyone does, but you will.”

“I already like her.” Steve means it. Bucky knows, because Steve only ever says what he means.

Steve lands the jet in an empty field. There are lots of empty fields. Bucky wonders if they are where demolished buildings, playgrounds, schools once stood. Maybe the survivors couldn’t live to see them knowing their children or parents or lovers were no longer around to enjoy them.

The address Darcy gave him is near the field. It isn’t an apartment like he assumed. It’s a house. Single-story, detached, with a front and back garden. There are flowers in pinks and purples and blues either side of the front door. Bucky’s entire body vibrates the further up the driveway he gets. She is going to make such fun of his hair. She already thought it was too long when they first met. And his beard. She hates the beard. Says it scratches her face when she kisses him.

God, he can’t wait to kiss her again.

He doesn’t make it to the door. He doesn’t make it, because Darcy bursts through before he can reach the patio steps.

It isn’t like a film. They don’t come to a halt and stare at each other, breathing heavily until someone snaps. No, it is nothing like that. Darcy runs straight for him and throws her arms around his neck, bashing into him so hard he almost loses his footing. He instantly wraps himself around her. His body starts fizzing again. Each breath feels like someone has poured a carbonated drink down his lungs.

He hears someone crying, and it isn’t until he hears Darcy whispering soothing words into his ear—soothing words interrupted by hiccups—that he realises he is the one crying. And he realises he never thought he’d see her again.

“I’m alright,” she says, taking his face in her hands. She strokes his cheeks with her thumbs. Wipes away the tears. She is crying too. Her face is red and swollen and drenched, and he can only imagine how much worse he looks. “You’re alright,” she says. Tears splatter the inside of her glasses. He bets she is looking at him through a kaleidoscope. Getting to her tiptoes, Darcy crushes her forehead to his. She kisses him. Her lips taste like salt. Like grief. Like honey. All of the good and all of the bad. She pulls away smiling through her sobs. “We’re alright.”

*** * ***

_you were the light in my eyes/_

_you're the answer_

*** * ***

She is wearing his sweater and sitting cross-legged on the bed, staring down at him. Her fingers trace the bruises on his collarbone. She has never seen him after a battle. She winces at the sight of every new patch of discoloured skin.

“Does it hurt?” she asks, poking his sternum.

Bucky’s breath hitches. “Only when you press it,” he says. She smiles guiltily, moving her finger to his left arm.

“No star,” she says, a stray droplet marching down her face. Bucky reaches up and wipes it away. “Sorry. I am happy. Too happy, I think. My body doesn’t know what the fuck it’s doing.”

“I’ve never cried this much,” Bucky admits, pulling on the sweater’s sleeve to get Darcy to lie down again. “I didn’t know I could cry this much.”

“I’m not surprised, you poor, repressed thing.”

“Not repressed anymore. Shuri cleared me of all of that,” he says.

Darcy rolls onto her side. Lifting herself up by the elbow, she places her head in her hand and stares at him. “I loved you before,” she says. “I love you still,” she says, “but I want you to know that I loved you before. Before you were ‘fixed’ or ‘cured’ or whatever,” she says, using air quotes to make her point. With her free hand, she smoothes her pointer finger over his lips. “I love you.”

He could burst. He thinks he might. With everything bubbling inside of him, he will not be surprised if he explodes. Sitting up, Bucky leans forward and takes Darcy into his arms. He kisses her lips, just because he can. Because he has missed her mouth.

This is like coming awake. Coming alive. Finally. After more than seventy years of being shackled to death, Bucky is alive and breathing.

“I love you,” he says into Darcy’s neck. He pinches the hem of the sweater and pulls up.


End file.
